Knitting from Outer Space

Because the weekend is the time I get most of my knitting in, it goes without saying that this is when I have the most knitting problems. I still need to post pictures from the lace fix that happened on the 15th (need to find the camera cable for that).

Sadly, I have no pictures from this past weekend’s yarn fiasco. I wish I did; it was truely spectacular for only being half my fault.

I had been happily knitting away on Chart 2 of Icarus when my center pull ball decided to vomit a little. It was sort of to be expected; there had been difficulties when winding it up. The yarn was slippery enough that, when it got to the top of the ball as the winder went ’round and ’round, it would just start wrapping around the ball winder’s core before getting caught in the groove. So, I knew going into this that there was a potential for problems down the road.

As I was sitting in my LYS contemplating how to handle the yarn vomit, the owner, Karen, offers to help out. No problem, I’ve seen her handle many a knot with ease. So, she pulls on the yarn vomit. I could tell that she was thinking to just pull out the problem center section, wrap it back up, and let me go my marry way.

Unfortunately, pulling on the yarn vomit only made the ball more sick. More yarn spilled out and tangled till we had a true mess on our hands.

In the end it took at least 6 hours total (could have been more) to unravel it all and get it back into usable ball form.

And I am now finally working on Chart 3… I may very well be blocking this in the hotel room before the wedding.

Nothing like your lace project, which you’re rushing to finish for a special event, giving you a bit of excitement on the weekend. There I was knitting along happily when I realized that I was missing a stitch. *cue suspenseful music*

I was in the 5th of 5 repeates section of the Icarus shawl. Once I had gotten a hang of the pattern several repeats back I had sort of stopped counting the knit stitches between each set of eyelets on a regular basis. For some reason I counted on section near the end of the row only to discover there were 6 stitches instead of 7. I held up the shawl and immediately saw where the problem was… 20 rows back.

I must have been distracted during one of the k2tog, yo, k1, yo, ssk and instead did k2tog, yo, ssk, and continued knitting on my merry way. This caused the rox of eyelets to shift over one stitch, and the missing yo was my missing stitch.

Since there was no way I was ripping back that much knitting, I decided to go for it and drop the stitches. Thankfully, this wasn’t the complicated section of lace. And, I paid close attention when Stephanie posted S.Kate’s pictures.

I put a stitch marker through the stitches just below the problem row, so the stitches wouldn’t go any further than that. I dropped the ssk stitch and its accompanying yo. This is when I actually realized what I had done… ssk the center stitch rather than just skipped a yo. So, the center stitch needed to be dropped as well. As I was dropping the ssk stitch another stitch popped up… this was from the ssk moving over a stitch.

Then, I took a deep breath.

I tried using pins to keep the strands separate, but they ended up just getting in the way. Thankfully, the tencel yarn is smooth so it doesn’t stick to itself and maintained a orderly queue.

I decided the best thing to do was to use a crochet hook to bring back up the straight knitted stitches: the center stitch and the previously missing 7th stitch. This left me with just the ssk and yo to worry about. It was slow going with the double point needles becuase they kept trying to slip out of the 2 stitches. But, I eventually got it back up to the top, and after straightening some of the stitches out, you can’t really tell there was ever a problem.

Whew. After describing all that I don’t think I have the energy to talk about when I found an extra stitch the next night.

Summer here in the SF Bay Area was ushered in by 5 Spare the Air days (3 of which were official) right in a row. Ever since I’ve been low-level miserable. I tried to very good and stay indoors, trying not to exert myself. This is probably why it wasn’t until the air quality began to improve that my asthma caught on. *ugh*

While my asthma has improved, my allergies in general have been annoying. The worst part being the off-and-on ear drum pain alternating with itchiness. So, I went to the doctor on Tuesday cause it didn’t look like it wanted to clear up on its own. Thankfully, she told me that it’s just fluid pressure and not an infection. Then, she gave me samples of Singulair to try out for both the allergies and the asthma.

I’m only on my second day, but I’m not sure what I think of it. It does seem to help at night (I take it in the evening, and it’s a once a day pill) even though it does seem to make me drowsy. But, today, I feel horribly draggy, and I don’t know if I’m simply tired, or if it’s the medicine. I think the reason I’m confised is because it’s not that drugged tired feeling most allergy medicines give me, it’s exhausted tired.

I’m supposed to try it out for a few weeks, and if it doesn’t work it’s on to something else.

My Records Management class has been keeping my nose to the grindstone (last week’s reading assignment was about 300 pages and that’s looking to be typical). I don’t have much left though. I have my topic paper due on the 20th, weekly readings with discussion board postings, one more class meeting at the Presidio, and a take-home final due by the 5th. Yup, nothing quite like the whirlwind that is 16 weeks of information crammed into half the time. *groan*

But I have been working my way through Icarus. I’m about to start the 5th of 5 repeats of the top portion. Then, on to the lace. I’d show you a picture, but we all know it’s just going to look like boiled ass. I am still hoping to have it done before I leave for the wedding cause I don’t really want to be blocking it on a hotel floor.

I am having fun with the yarn (it’s a lace weight 100% tencel I picked up at Stitches West). It has such a nice sheen to it and feels almost like silk when you scruntch it in your hand. Funny enough, though, I haven’t checked to make sure the color (a dusty pink) goes with the dress I picked out. Now to find a nice pin to secure the shawl to the strap of the dress so that it doesn’t shift around during the ceremony. I have to speak in front of a crowd of people (okay, it’s only like 30), and I don’t want to have to worry about where my lace shawl is creeping off to while doing it.

On a SQUEE note, I have a reservation to see Stephanie at Full Thread Ahead in September. Whee! Steph, I’m not sure if you still read my blog since I haven’t posted in like a month, but I know you lamented the lack of a pub visit the last time you where in the San Francisco Bay Area. My husband, the Canadian you outed with the Smarties jingle, has offered to find a good one in the Los Altos area.